Affiliation:
1. Department of Psychology Bournemouth University Poole UK
2. Department of Psychology and Research Institute for Health Sciences (iUNICS) University of the Balearic Islands Palma Spain
3. Balearic Islands Health Research Institute (IdISBa) Palma Spain
4. School of Psychology University of Western Australia Perth Western Australia Australia
Abstract
AbstractNovel sounds that unexpectedly deviate from a repetitive sound sequence are well known to cause distraction. Such unexpected sounds have also been shown to cause global motor inhibition, suggesting that they trigger a neurophysiological response aimed at stopping ongoing actions. Recently, evidence from eye movements has suggested that unexpected sounds also temporarily pause the movements of the eyes during reading, though it is unclear if this effect is due to inhibition of oculomotor planning or inhibition of language processes. Here, we sought to distinguish between these two possibilities by comparing a natural reading task to a letter scanning task that involves similar oculomotor demands to reading, but no higher level lexical processing. Participants either read sentences for comprehension or scanned letter strings of these sentences for the letter ‘o’ in three auditory conditions: silence, standard, and novel sounds. The results showed that novel sounds were equally distracting in both tasks, suggesting that they generally inhibit ongoing oculomotor processes independent of lexical processing. These results suggest that novel sounds may have a global suppressive effect on eye‐movement control.
Funder
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
European Regional Development Fund
Subject
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology,Biological Psychiatry,Cognitive Neuroscience,Developmental Neuroscience,Endocrine and Autonomic Systems,Neurology,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology,Neuropsychology and Physiological Psychology,General Neuroscience
Cited by
2 articles.
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